Regionality and Relations to the State in the Andagua Valley, Southern Peruvian Andes

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Itinerant Bureaucrats and Empire" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

In the mid-18th century, spurred by recent Bourbon reforms and claiming years of unpaid tribute, Spanish colonial officials journeyed to the town of Andagua in the high Southern Peruvian Andes. Yet upon arriving they encountered firm resistance to their regional colonial authority that coalesced around the leaders of reputed ancestor cults, nearly inciting a rebellion. A six-hundred page historical court case describes how colonial officials, and a force of 150 soldiers, burned ancestral mummies and attempted to eradicate Andean religious beliefs and practices. This historical record provides seductive ethnographic clarity to encounters among state officials and local Andean communities that constitute the colonial panorama – especially during late Spanish colonialism and a century defined by rebellions (Salomon 1987). Expanding beyond the historical record, this paper investigates local histories, cultural practices and regional identities, illuminating the archaeological and historical formation of relations among local populations and colonial state actors and institutions.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Itinerant Bureaucrats and Empire   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2019

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 332